Actually, my MO for the past week had been no contact period, but that was a little hard to do when the guy you’re dodging knows things about you. Specifically, the lock code on your front door.
“You can go home, Hudson. I’m fine.” Out of my periphery, I watched him perch his hands on his hips.
“No,” he argued. “Not until we figure this shit out.”
So he had noticed my ghosting. I hoped he wasn’t as good at calling my bluff.
“There is no shit.”
“What about what you said at the—”
“Yeah, I must have had a cold or something. Whatever it was, I’m over it.”
“Yep. Hey, how was your date?” My topic-swapping skills were on point. “I expected you’d have a long night with Kate.” I had to be careful. I didn’t want to come across as jealous, and I was sounding that way. My tone was all wrong and I still couldn’t look at him. And for the record, I was jealous as a motherfucker.
But I didn’t want to be.
“It was fine. Well, except…” His voice trailed off before he could finish the sentence.
Damn my curiosity. “What was wrong with her? I swear. You’re getting awful picky in our old age.”
He took a step closer, and I took a step back toward my sink. It was easier to pretend when there was distance between us. But though he was still several feet away, my pulse raced and my breaths became shallow. It was hell.
“The truth?” His booming voice shot back as he crept forward, but I had nowhere else to go. “The truth is the date was a ten. Kate looked great. The food—the finger food more specifically—was delicious, what little there was of it. Our conversation flowed easily enough.”
When he stopped, only an arm’s length away, I finally seized what scrap of pride I had and looked up into his blue eyes. His big, deep-blue eyes. Then I swallowed.
“So, what happened? Are you seeing her again?”
Hudson huffed. “Well, that’s kind of up to you.”
“Me?” I dropped the spoon into the sink and put the ice cream down so I could cross my arms over my chest. “What do I have to do with it?”
His lids fell shut, and he tipped his head at the ceiling, stretched his neck from side to side, and then brought his gaze back to mine. “Kate seems to think that, maybe, I have a thing…for you.”
My face flushed hot, and I wondered if maybe I’d fallen down trying to get out of my leather skirt earlier and I was dreaming, passed out on my bedroom floor. The issue with that theory was I could smell him, feel the warmth from his body in front of me, and see his heartbeat thumping in the vein in his neck.
This was real, but I still wasn’t sure I could handle it.
“Well, that’s just, uh, dumb,” I contended weakly. Shaking my head to rattle myself back to sanity, I asked, “W-why did she say that?” I tried to laugh, but it was as fake as my gusto.
“Because, apparently, I talked about you the whole night.”
Okay, I was wrong. I’d thought riding in a car with him and seeing him shirtless and watching him play with Jack and seeing how much he loved my family and having him touch me and avoiding him all week had been torture.
This moment was a whole new level of torment.
“So?” I said childishly.
Because it didn’t matter how I felt or what I wanted. I couldn’t just leap into his arms and expect everything to turn out the way it was supposed to. That’s not how my life worked.
“So I need to find out if this, whatever’s been building between us, is something.”
Wouldn’t that be nice? Up until that very second, it had all been so one-sided and I’d racked my brain all week to understand why I’d felt the crazy things I did about him.
“How you gonna do that?”
“We’re going to kiss,” he stated very matter-of-factly, and then he closed the distance between our bodies.
“We are?” I whispered. My voice had all but left the building.
“Unless you stop me right now.”
I wanted to.
I didn’t want to.
I was scared.
I was excited.
But mostly, I wasn’t stopping him. I was frozen.
He tipped my chin up and I trembled.
“Tell me to stop, Lex.”
I said nothing.
He licked his lips and then whispered, “Last chance.”
That close, I saw the flecks of sapphire in his eyes as he slowly blinked down at